


The Lights of Kabukicho

by deargodwhatisthatthing



Category: Gintama
Genre: Drunkenness, F/M, Friendship/Love, Love Triangles, needs work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8374129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deargodwhatisthatthing/pseuds/deargodwhatisthatthing
Summary: Three friends, four bars, one sleazy town.





	

The unlit lanterns above her head swing in the breeze - it’s already dark as she heads through Kabukicho but she’s not worried.  This is her town, and everyone knows who she is.  Still, the two extra stops to drop off leftovers have delayed her more than she anticipated, and rounding the corner into the main street, she spots them, seated at the dango bar - waiting for her, probably for some time already.  They look deep in conversation.  The thought crosses her mind briefly, tantalisingly, that they might be talking about her, and she only considers the ethics of the situation for the briefest of seconds before sidling up to the shadows beside the booth to eavesdrop. 

Jirochou is glowering intensely and gesturing with a calloused hand.  His brows are knitted together in an ominous scowl and he seems half out of his seat as if ready to draw his tanto but, she reflects , they might very well just be discussing what to order next - that guy has worn the same scowl on his face ever since they were both tough, scrappy little kids.

Tatsugorou is tapping his finger against his glass lazily.  Does he feel jealous, ever? Sometimes she wonders.  He never seems to be, not even when she and Jiro get into some long-winded story of some exploit of their childhood or if she expresses her pride that that scruffy little punk has grown up so upstanding (thanks to her).  He just raises his eyebrows over his half slung eyelids with a shrewd smile, detached, remote.  

Right now, he is catching the eye of the waitress with a rakish tilt of his head.  The poor girl is a plain little thing, and being caught in the full beam of his charm is clearly too much for her.  Ayano shakes her head solemnly.  The bastard will pay for that.  She leans in a little to listen.

Disappointingly, they don’t appear to be discussing her at all.  Jirochou is seated again now, brooding over his glass.  He drains it, slams it down.  “All night place, round the corner,” he grunts brusquely.  “Fancy it?”

Tatsugorou is holding his glass while the flustered, giggling waitress behind the bar pours the spirit into it.  He glances behind him and his eyes glint.  “I don’t know”, he begins loudly, “if my old lady will let me.  She’s so creaky and tired these days, I’m not sure she can manage a late night…”

Busted.  “Ha!”  She bobs up between them and bats her husband lightly on the top of his head.   “Nice try, Tatsu.  You can’t fool Jiro-chan – he knows you’re the one who taps out too soon.”  She perform a deft sleight of hand and Tatsugorou finds he is no longer holding his drink – she downs it in one and comes up smiling. “See if you can keep up.”  For good measure, she swipes the last dango off Jirochou’s plate. 

“Ayano!  Dammit, I was saving that!”

“I know – for me!”  She grins, bean paste in her teeth. “And you’re a dear sweet boy and I love you for it.”  She blows him a kiss and sticks her tongue out at Tatsugorou, who grins lazily and swings his legs over the bench, pushing back the awning fringe as he gets up.  Jirochou follows suit and she wriggles between them, trotting to keep up and draping her arms around their shoulders.   The lanterns all seem to be lit now, bright as day, and despite her claim, she can already feel the spirit making an agreeably warm trail into her slender belly, lightening her head.   “My boys, my boys,” she declares happily, looking from one to the other.  “Where shall we go?  I feel like tearing up the town a little bit.”

“Oi, oi.  Not too much, old girl.  I have to keep a little bit of order.  It’s bad enough for my reputation in the first place for people to see me hanging around with the former Terror of Kabukicho.  And with Jirochou, too, ” Tatsugorou adds as an afterthought, which earns him a punch on the arm. 

Jirochou runs a hand through his scruff of hair and eyeballs her.  “So, how come when I tear up the town, it’s a public disorder?”

“Because my only weapons are my smile and _this_  dango stick, and your weapons are… well, they’re actual weapons.  Besides, you don’t do that anymore, you’re very well-behaved these days.  And that means,” she says, hooking her elbows around their necks and pedalling her feet in the air between them, “I don’t have to always be the sensible one.”

 

 

Three hours and four different bars later, it is unclear which of them is taking a turn at being the sensible one.  They are walking beside the river along the top of the steep slope down to the water’s edge, the lanterns in the town finally lit to their right, in contrast to the yawning black of the river to the left.  Jirochou - _Jirochou_  - is singing, tunelessly and at a fearsome and impressive volume; Tatsugorou has his jutte in one hand and his kiseru in the other and is conducting the singing with evident passion. Ayano is striding ahead with Jirochou’s scarf tied around her head, and there was originally a reason for this, but she can’t remember what it is anymore.  Also, she is drrrrrrunk and this is suddenly hilarious.  Also, she is rolling down the slope for some reason.  This is also hilarious, and she lies at the bottom of the slope at the water’s edge, giggling for a while.

Tatsurgorou’s amused face appears above her, upside down. “What the fuck are you doing down here?”

“I’m stargazing, dumbass.  It’s something I do sometimes, totally on purpose.”  She hiccups and grins broadly at him. 

“Idiot”, he sighs good-naturedly.  “Oi!”  he bellows up the slope.  “We’ve an elderly lady here who’s fallen and can’t get up.  What shall I do with her?”

Jirochou arrives at the bottom of the slope in an ungainly tangle.  His usual wild mop of hair is even more dishevelled than usual and he wears an uncharacteristically large smile.  “Chuck the old fish-face back in the water where she belongs.”

“Right you are.”  Tatsu seizes one wrist and one ankle.  “You get the other side.”

Ayano squeals until they let her go and then they all sink down onto the damp grass to recover.  She pokes each of them in the belly in turn.  “Enough with the “old”, already.  I’m only two years older than _y_ _ou_  and I’m three years younger than _you_!”   She lies back, clasping each of them by the hand and exhales happily into the warm air. 

It never matters where they go or how often they get to meet.  They always wait for her and pretend to complain when she is late out from work, Tetsugorou always lets her swipe his drink, Jirochou always leaves one sweet dango on his plate.  And no matter where they go, some shitty bar, a sub-par eating house, even just lying here by this stinking river while the moisture from the muddy grass gradually seeps through to their skin – this is always their crappy old Kabukicho, and these two men somehow make this sleazy place feel as if it’s full of family.  Each in their own way, they keep these shady streets lit up.      

They lie there a little longer and then Jirochou sits up, followed a moment later by Tatsugorou.  There are running footsteps up on the hill, and Jirochou is on his feet before she has even raised herself to her elbows; she sees his stance shift, his weight dropping; beside her, Tatsugorou is taut and tensed. 

Then the man calls out to Jirochou and the quality of the air changes, everybody breathes again.  The man trots down the slope and there is a low-voiced exchange.  Jirochou nods and turns back towards them. 

“I have to go.  Things are moving.” 

Tatsugorou gets to his feet.  “Do you need help?  I can say I got a tip-off.”

“Nah.  I’m good.”  Jirochou’s face is shadowed, guarded again.   

The warm glow left by the alcohol drains out of her as if a plug has been pulled.  It’s been a long time since Jirochou needed her to keep him on the straight and narrow, and she is pragmatic enough to know that keeping the ugly elements of Kabukicho under control can’t always be done in a beautiful way.  But they are becoming more and more frequent, these nightly raids or investigations or whatever they are.  They seemed to involve Amanto more and more, and there is talk of actual war breaking out.  Not long ago, they arrived back with one of their number – young, barely more than a kid  – bleeding from a long gash that stretched across his face.  She knows he does it to protect that same Kabukicho they all love. But every time he goes, it feels as if the water in the river swirls a little darker than before.

She taps him primly on the shoulder and hands him back his scarf, his coarse hard skin clutching briefly at her fingers.  “Be careful,” she says evenly, her mouth smiling, but her eyes searching, searching, looking into the dark red glint beneath his brows for some assurance. 

Jirochou snorts scornfully and begins to turn away; then, he makes a sudden jerky movement and, so swiftly that she’s barely sure it’s happened, she feels his thin dry lips pressed briefly against her forehead; and then he’s gone, engulfed in the darkness. 

 

She doesn’t know it yet, of course, but soon she will lose them both – one to a bullet, the other to guilt, which (for all that it does not leave that visible ragged hole) will destroy her friend with the same ruthless efficiency as death will her husband.  Neither of them will ever return from the war, and neither will that famous smile of hers.  She will buy a kiseru just like Tatsu’s and clench it in her teeth, but she won’t be able to keep the smoke she draws into her lungs, no matter how she tries; eventually, with her throat burning and her eyes streaming, she must cough it out and watch it vanish.  After a while, she will switch to cigarettes and, for a time, she’ll hope that they will kill her.  When they don’t, she will pick herself up and carry on, because when you’re a tough scrappy kid from Kabukicho, it’s all you know how to do, even if you must do it in the dark. 

But that’s all in the future, the future of another woman by another name.  Right now, it is Ayano who stands, holding her heart out into the dark for a few moments, stretching every nerve and opening her eyes wide against the blackness to try and catch a last glimpse of Jirochou as he vanishes.  Then she shakes her head, turns on her heel with a bright smile and she and Tatsugorou start to meander back towards home.

 

 

Later, as they lie entangled, she raises one slender, smooth hand up towards the ceiling and muses, “what will you do when I really am an old lady?”  She rolls on to her side and pulls a grotesque face, batting her eyes at the same time.  “When I’m old and crusty.  Will you still think I’m beautiful then?”  She is teasing and kittenish, so it catches her off guard when he cups his hand to her jawline and draws his thumb down her cheek tenderly, his dark eyes searching over her face as if committing it to memory before the candle snuffs out and leaves them in the dark.  For a few moments, all he does is look at her.  Then his arms strain tightly around her as he draws her to him and his voice rumbles low through his chest into hers: “Old will be perfect.  It would be a privilege to grow old with you.”

It is these fleeting candid moments when the guard drops and his face is open and gentle, so gentle, that she is lost and breathless and falling, and she knows in her heart – just as he does - that poor sweet irascible Jirochou never even stood a chance. 

 

*

 

“Oi, Baba…”

The first time he calls her this, it stings, first the sound and shape of those words coming from such a different mouth, and then the realisation that now at last it’s true. She _is_ old.   _Ah, Tatsu, you cheated.  You didn’t stay long enough for me to test you on your promise._

“Baba, oi!  You spacing out over there?”  Gintoki is sitting at the bar, levering peanut fragments out of his back teeth.  He sprawls lazily on the bar stool, his impassive eyes on her from beneath his tangle of hair.  “Has your brain finally taken the train out of the station?  Mmm, probably seeing things too, like Gin-san helping himself to another drink, as if he’d do tha- _aaaah_!”

Otose smiles wryly as Tama politely holds Gintoki’s arm and seeks to extract the correct change from him. “That will be 300 yen, Gintoki-sama.”  From his panicked screams, she is searching for his wallet in some of the less obvious places.  Catherine is caterwauling some song along with the radio and taking the occasional break to yell at Kagura, who is sitting on the counter tipping rice directly from the cooker into her gaping maw while Shinpachi plugs his earphones in a little tighter against all the noise.  Sadaharu just yawns contentedly.      

 

Ayano smiles through Otose’s lips and she takes a long drag on the cigarette.   _This is still our same old crappy Kabukicho, Tatsu, Jiro_ , she thinks.   _The lights are still on._


End file.
